


picking up the pieces

by CyberPhoenix



Category: Henry Stickmin Series (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, M/M, randy is not dead he just sorta peaced out, terrence isnt bad! hes just sad :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26917144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyberPhoenix/pseuds/CyberPhoenix
Summary: Terrence Suave, one of the worst leaders of the Toppat Clan, reflects for a moment.
Relationships: Randy Radman/Terrence Suave
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	picking up the pieces

It was too quiet, when the morning came.

If you'd seen him, dressed like this, you might think him to be mourning. Grieving. Dressed up as if headed to a funeral. But no, the wardrobe of one Terrence Suave was simply like that. Monochrome and solid, as if the world itself was devoid of color. 

It hadn't been, before today. Now, it seemed... all too real.

Waking up as leader wasn't something he had ever truly looked forward to. Because it meant an end. To something, to someone, to...   
...to him.

He who painted the world in vibrant colors, who let the air sing with joy, who lit up even the darkest hours of the night. He who warmed a frozen heart so long turned away from the heat of life, so long shielded under anger. Like a candle that burned too brightly, burned out too soon.

Like a lover, gone and leaving nothing but the void of a memory behind, with all those sweet memories turning into nothing but bitterness at a world that would take it all away at a moment's notice.

Terrence sighed, and tried not to think about it.

* * *

  
  
"What would _he_ think, if he saw you like this?"

It was an innocent question at surface, but rooted in the pettiest, darkest of intentions. Like a knife through the back, opening up a wound long scabbed over that drilled right to the heart of one Terrence Suave. Long seen as tyrannical on his worst days, chillingly silent on his best, leadership had taken its toll not only on the clan, but on himself. Picking up the pieces that the prior leader-- damn, couldn't even think his name anymore, huh-- had left behind, already on the brink of collapse, it hadn't been easy. Some might've argued he hadn't even done that.

They were left with nothing, when Terrence took charge. Funds drained and never recovered, heists failing over and over, and morale at the lowest it had been in a long time. It didn't help that the void left behind was filled with nothing but bitterness, for many. The prior leader was still spoken about, and still scorned. People had an enemy to rally against, to paint as the cause of their problems, to blame everything on, as if they'd never known him to begin with. Simply because of how it all ended. 

Terrence couldn't help but share at least a little anger over it, himself. Randy had... left. Vanished one night, without a word or trace. Leaving everything behind, before something worse could happen to him. Cowardice, one might call it-- but Terrence didn't fault him for that. Instead, he only held the bitter tears of someone who wished he could've said a proper goodbye first. Maybe, in another life, he would've fled alongside him, abandoning the clan and moving onto something better. But... no, even that would've been a mistake. Randy had left the clan in his hands, thinking them capable, and not knowing how much of that capability came from his own presence.

It wasn't as if he relied on Randy in such a way to be dependent, no-- far from it. Terrence was smart, was calculating, and knew what to do, at least for the most part. Leadership wasn't something he was prepared for, but it was something he could handle. Rather... it was the ensuing emotions that seemed to drag him down. Missing that other half, longing for something else-- in the early days, he couldn't even focus on proper heists or helping manage things. He acted like a lonesome dog, tied to a post, waiting bitterly for a companion that would never return. It took a while, to get over that.

But perhaps it wasn't the best, to merely take those feelings and turn them on their head. To push down any care as a sign of weakness, to show strength only through power, never through words. To break away from the man he'd once been, so tied to someone else but yet so much more whole for it, and to become nothing but a husk, filled with the dangerous ideas of someone who felt he no longer had anything left to lose. He would bring the clan to greatness, or... so he thought.

It didn't get to him, he would tell himself. The little comments about how bad things were under Randy, and how hopefully Terrence would 'make up' for his mistakes. As if they only saw him for the wealth, and not for everything else he'd been. As if they saw Randy as nothing, now that he was gone, disregarding everything he'd done for them. As if everything Randy had been to *him*, too, no longer mattered. Terrence supposed it really didn't matter, now. Being kind when he couldn't hear it wasn't going to bring him back one day. Besides... the way things were going, he was sure he'd be spoken about in much a similar fashion. How the mighty fell, it seemed.

Terrence Suave was... lost, really, in a way that didn't seem fixable. He poured all of his focus into helping the clan, into getting things back on their feet, launching heist after heist, pushing boundary after boundary, trying to claw his way up-- their way up-- from the abyss that threatened to consume him. And with all that, he slipped up. Became more callous, more aggressive. His way or nothing-- it was all he could do. Randy had left things to him, and no one was going to challenge his rule like this. No one else knew how damned the pressure of leadership was, to hold everything on your shoulders and to bear the responsibility when it all toppled over. He became an angry man, hardened into bitterness by a world that had so left him with nothing but scraps, taking away anything he might've once wanted.

He didn't have much left to hope for. Being leader, pushing the clan towards better sights, trying his hardest to make things work... it was all he had going for him, and even then. Even then, with that emptiness that rotted his insides, twisting his heart until all he could do was exert power over others, trying desperately to find something to fill the void left within him, he had nothing. A love for thrill was the only thing Randy left behind. For the energy, for the party, for that one rush of only thinking in the now, and never anything else. 

And that was what he would be remembered for, when it all finally came apart.

What _would_ Randy think, seeing him like this?  
  
Pity? Fear? Regret? Anger?  
  
Or just a deep sadness that his trust had been placed in the wrong man for the job?  
One that had grown too attached to something that would've always been fleeting.

Well, he could speculate all he wanted.

"What does it matter, huh? He's long gone."

**Author's Note:**

> yo follow me on tumblr @hemlock-up-my-heart
> 
> i think terrence should be deep


End file.
